A Feminine Approach to Non-Dual Realization

by Miranda Macpherson

As her natural way of being, Miranda Macpherson is "unapologetically feminine." Her message of all-inclusive love and acceptance powerfully transmit a clarity and wisdom that invite us not only to realize the truth of who we are, but to actualize and consciously embody that truth in our everyday human lives.

“Out of the womb of the human heart, God is born.” — Sufi saying

The first of its kind, The Feminine Face of God was a book authored by Sherry Anderson in the early 90’s. It spoke to the possibility that the awakening feminine might have a different focus on spiritual teachings than that of the masculine lens through which we’ve been looking for millennia.

More than twenty years later, I believe that the essential feminine still remains so unnamed that most women, even women who are quite awake, don’t necessarily understand some of the subtle pulses running through them.

I grew up in Australia, which is a very masculine oriented culture. As a young girl I felt that there wasn’t a lot of support for my own deeply felt feminine nature that is fluid and non-linear, that senses the way of things somatically, through movement, music and beauty. This feminine within seemed inherently awake to the importance of relationship as a primary gateway home, awake to the power of love.

As I got older, I realized that there was very little modeling in the culture for the true feminine. Instead, what I saw was a worshiping of a very objectified, superficial manifestation of the feminine. For many women, myself included, this felt diminishing.

Yet I always intuited that there was something very sacred about the deeper aspects of the feminine, so I began to study about it. If you dig deep enough, the divine feminine expression of the unnamable Mystery shows up in every mystical tradition. She represents the immanent aspect, and is often the bridge to deeper realization and especially its embodiment into daily life in this world. From Tara in Tibetan Buddhism to Mary in Christianity – she expresses a depth of compassion, love and dynamic grace, which we so need at every stage of the awakening process.

For the first time in recent history, many of us on this planet are free to explore spiritual truth beyond the confines of one particular religious view. Women are now free not only to study mystical teachings, but also to become spiritual leaders and teachers. Even thirty years ago that probably wouldn’t have been possible. Simply having female teachers is a relatively new phenomena. Until recently the great teachings have been given almost exclusively through the male lens, which raises questions about the possibility that our understanding of what awakening is and how it is best supported may be incomplete.